“I’m fine!” I cried back, offering a shaky grin. “I’m good!”
I lied like the best of them now, thanks to the Ship of Spells.
But suddenly, there was a crate of chimeric at my feet, and I looked up. Neale and Dik had brought it for me, and my chest almost burst at the sight. They knuckled a salute and backed away, wisely not staying too close to a lit wick and her fuel.
“Last leg, Aro’el!” Kier shouted, and I pulled strength from the sound of his voice. I was his kedge, but Forge dammit if he wasn’t the wind in my sails.
We were rounding in on the northern gap once more, preparing to head into the Channel. This was the dangerous part, I knew. We’d close this gap behind us and keep closing it as we sailed. A normal gap was close and run—Thrum, Call, and Bind—but this was close andkeepclosingwhilewe ran. I didn’t even know theAuctorusfor that. It didn’t matter. I trusted he did.
I turned my weary eyes to see him, shining and arrogant and proud. He was grinning at me through his tangle of sea-dark hair.
His eyes. My heart.
I hate you, I mouthed, my lips tugging into one cheek as I teased.
“Good,” he said.
I loved him so much.
With a deep breath, I plunged my hands into the crate of the chimeric. I screamed as it shot up my arms and into my belly, seared my bones but set my body alight with power. It took me apart and put me together. It emptied me and made me full. Pushing and pulling at the very same time.
It was pain and it was pleasure. Edges of the same blade.
I spun and sent another wave into the Dreadwall as theMarelethanbanked starboard and took us into the Channel. TheTemplemorewas at our stern, and I could see Bracebridge holding the forecastle rail, his gray hair slicked back off his face. I knew he longed to blow us from the waters, but he was a pragmatic man, choosing life over vengeance and duty. I glanced at Kier. Maybe not so pragmatic, but perhaps he was charting a new course, too, abandoninghisvengeance to choose life. To choose his kedge. To choose me.
Suns, I couldn’t even imagine what that would be like.
No, maybe I could.
We wereinthe Channel now, racing through it at a rate of knots, and it was not at all like the Halls of Silence or of Sheets. We were literally slicing through the Dreadwall, and the waters raged up on either side. The howl deafened, the spray stung, and the magik reflected all things like a madhouse of glass.
“Spinners, at the ready!” Dev shouted, and I knew we were going to close it now, behind us as we ran with the wind. TheTemplemorewas fast, her sails full and her lines bluff. She was able to keep to our stern and run north along with us, keeping her safe in our wake. But the other five ships lagged behind her in this gap, and they ran the risk of being shattered like theMeradah Thennwhen the waters rushed in.
No. I couldn’t think of that.
“Aro’el!” Kier cried. “We do this now!”
And he flung another pattern, theThryh’siahr tryo’visseth, into my waiting hands.I caught it but slid backward at the force, the spell almost pushing me from the pup. I crouched low, marshalled my chimeric, and leaped to my feet, flinging it high, over theTemplemore, over the fleet, straight into the gap behind us.
“Again!”
And again, I caught it, augmented it, flung it over the sea.
Again and again and again, until I thought I’d burst into ash, when behind me, there was a sound. A crack of lightning, a peel of thunder, and the jambs of the Dreadwall itself erupted in a shower of colors and lights like fireworks or a hailstorm of shooting stars. The sea boiled with pattern. The waters roared with zeal. Plumes burst up into the sky, one after another, as the Dreadwall began to move.
Like two sides of a curtain being drawn over a window, the Channel slammed itself shut. A glittering wall of fury and elemental force closed behind us, and all around, the ocean thundered. It roared and it thundered, and Kier stepped up the speed of his casting. I caught and I flung. I caught and I flung. My hands were numb, my body spent, and my thoughts began to detach, to slip away into the Worldrune where my whole life was seared in rune. I was wayward. I was willful. I was stubborn. I was proud. I had served the marvelous, magikal Ship of Spells.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard a boom. It rocked the deck beneath my boots.
I had a duty to this ship.
Shouts from the crew. The ship pitched forward.
I had a duty to my family, now the marvelous, magikal crew of theMarelethan.
His voice, barking orders over the Dreadwall’s deafening wail.
I had a duty to my lover. Kier Gavriel. Moon Weaver. I loved him to the moons and back.
